Property Instructions for Your Partner: A Brisbane Parent’s Plan for the Family Home and Beyond

You’re raising kids in Brisbane, you and your partner own the house in Paddington or Wynnum or Forest Lake, and there might also be a unit you’ve kept as an investment or a block down the coast your parents helped you buy. The mortgage broker is in one inbox, the insurer’s renewal sits in another, the conveyancer who did the last purchase has changed firms twice, and the title documents are — somewhere. The plan is to leave your partner a clear, current list of every property, who holds the paper, and who to ring first.

The problem

When a parent dies, ASIC’s MoneySmart estate planning guidance is blunt about what happens next: the executor has to identify what the deceased owned, value it, deal with any debts secured against it, and then distribute according to the will. Property is the slowest part of that work. A Queensland executor often spends weeks just establishing what exists — pulling titles, finding the insurer, identifying the mortgagee, locating the managing agent for a rental, working out whether a holiday property is held jointly, in a trust, or through a company.

Your partner doesn’t need your banking password or your conveyancer’s portal login. They need to know: every property you hold an interest in, how it’s owned (sole, joint tenants, tenants in common, trust), who insures it and what the policy number is, who the mortgagee is, where the title document or Certificate of Title lives, who manages any tenants, and which solicitor or conveyancer handled the most recent transaction. Without that map, your partner is reconstructing your property history from bank statements while also parenting through a crisis.

What the Digital Legacy Vault does

The Digital Legacy Vault is an asset-instruction register for Australian families: you record what you own, where to find it, and who you’ve nominated to receive the instructions. The simplified version (built for individuals and families) records, per property: address, ownership structure, mortgagee name and contact, insurer and policy number, the location of title documents, the managing agent for tenanted properties, the conveyancer or solicitor most recently involved, and your preferences about what you’d like done with the property. It does NOT store deeds, mortgage logins, or banking credentials. Your partner sees the inventory you’ve prepared for them, only when you’ve authorised release.

The boundary matters: the Digital Legacy Vault is not a financial product, not a custody service, and not an advice service. It’s an instructions register. That’s what keeps it outside the AFSL regime (Corporations Act Part 7.6) and outside AUSTRAC reporting — and it’s also why it can be a simple subscription rather than a regulated product. Personal information stored in the vault is handled under the Australian Privacy Principles.

How it works

  1. You add each property to your vault — address, ownership structure, mortgagee, insurer, policy and loan reference numbers, where the title document is physically kept.
  2. You add the human contacts — your conveyancer, your insurance broker, your property manager — so your partner has a name and phone number, not a Google search.
  3. You name your partner as the recipient for the property module and they accept (the vault records their consent).
  4. If something happens, your partner is notified per your release rules and sees only the property instructions module — not your other modules unless you’ve released them too.
  5. Your partner takes the inventory to the executor and to your solicitor. The executor still runs probate; the vault accelerates the finding step, not the legal process.

Why this matters in Brisbane

Brisbane families often hold a more complex property mix than the size of the city suggests — a primary home in town, a unit kept from before the kids arrived, a Sunshine Coast or Gold Coast property used half the year and rented the other half, sometimes a parcel held through a family trust set up by an accountant who has since retired. Queensland title is administered through the Titles Registry and most owners now hold electronic titles, which means the “where is the deed” question has been replaced by “who is your conveyancer and what’s the property reference” — answers your partner will not have memorised. A clear instructions module saves a Brisbane family weeks of executor time and reduces the chance that a property is missed, insured incorrectly during the estate period, or sold below its value because no one knew who to call.

Sources

Join the waitlist

Join the waitlist — first access when the Digital Legacy Vault opens for Brisbane parents

We’re opening waitlist access in tranches. Sign up to be notified when parents in Brisbane can register their first property module. The Digital Legacy Vault holds instructions about what exists and how your partner can find it — not your title deeds, not your mortgage logins, and not custody of the properties themselves.